This underlined IT as a profession to rival stonemasons, tailors and skinners
– just some of the other 108 livery companies to have been granted royal
charters since the formation of the first in 1356.

But by raising WCIT's profile and hopefully attracting more members, it may
also herald a return to what the guild claims to do best – nurturing people into
IT careers by focusing on education, apprenticeships, placements and mentoring
from industry veterans.

“The fact that the work we have been doing has been recognised and
appreciated gives us the enthusiasm and encouragement to continue,” said WCIT
master Charles Hughes, an ex-president of the British Computing Society (BCS)
and managing director of his own IT advisory company.

Current WCIT projects include building a brand new secondary academy for
11-to-18-year olds in Hammersmith, west London, with a special focus on creative
digital media and IT; helping ex-service men and women of the Royal Signals
Corps to find jobs with big tech companies; and providing a journeyman scheme to
help young people in the early stages of their career and give advice to tech
start-ups and entrepreneurs.

The guild also engages in charity work by raising funds and resources, and
giving free IT consultancy to organisations such as the Royal Chelsea Children's
Hospital School, the Essex Association of Boy's Clubs, the National Childminding
Association and homeless charity Centrepoint.

“The IT industry has obligations to society to give something back, and it is
very satisfying to help children and give out cheques,” said WCIT senior warden
Ken Olisa, who has been a member of the guild since the late 80s and is also a
vice president of the BCS, having worked at IBM before setting up technology
merchant bank Interregnum in 2000.

Raising funds for charitable causes from the WCIT's 720 members will remain a
big part of the WCIT's remit, but Olisa feels that the guild should work harder
to foster closer links with the IT industry itself in order to give more
fledgling IT professionals a helping hand in starting their careers.

“We would like closer links between company CEOs and what we do – we have
sort of drifted away from that since we started and we need to get back to it,”
said Olisa. “One example is getting BT's JP Rangaswami on board, and we need to
lure more of those IT industry movers and shakers into the livery.”

WCIT court assistant Tom Ilube is the Hammersmith Academy's chairman of
governors, and also founder of online bank Egg and online identity protection
service Garlik. He and other governors are still mulling over exactly what will
go into the school, currently under construction and due for completion in 2011,
but says it is important to design the building to support the ICT curriculum
from the ground up.

“You see these rough, tough kids engaging with computers, and technology
makes it possible to build a school that takes 21st century learning ideas and
uses them throughout the curriculum – in English, history and maths, where IT
can also play a role,” he said.

The school will accommodate 780 children, split evenly between boys and
girls. Ilube is still deciding whether or not they will be able to bring their
own iPads and iPhones onto the campus, but confirms the school will support
laptop connectivity with fixed and wireless networks and terminals, and will
have its own mini datacentre onsite.

The school will be financed as an academy, with the government providing the
£36m building costs (the school meets a pressing need for a new educational
facility in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham), and the WCIT and the
Mercers Guild putting in a further £2m each to fund IT provision, ongoing
maintenance and an endowment that will be used to pay for additional systems as
and when needed. Ilube also believes it is crucial to recruit a headmaster and
teachers who are technology focused.

“Some teachers really want to embrace IT, others do not want to go near it or
touch it – in our school, every one of the teachers thinks technology is great,”
he said.

“The school has WCIT members it can call on for extra funding and the £1m
endowment generates additional income to be used for the benefit of the academy
– for example, if we see a great piece of technology that will help with special
education needs, we need to be able to go out and buy that.”

“If we have 120 students needing quality work placements, let's go out and
find them with the likes of the BBC, Microsoft, IBM and others, and give sixth
formers some mentoring from IT professionals, or those who have been to
university who can tell them what it is like and what they need to get. The
members are really keen to do that,” said Ilube.

Given the importance of securing ongoing funding, sponsorships and work
placements within the IT industry, recruiting new executives to the guild is
paramount. But are prospective members put off by all the pomp and ceremony that
goes hand in hand with ICT membership?

“People can be put off by it, but what matters is that ICT is seen to be
inclusive. It needs to work hard to engage women and ethnic minorities too, not
come across as some masonic branch,” said Olisa.

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